
Ciass 

Book 12 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The New Life in Christ Jesus 



The New Life in 
Christ Jesus 

By 

C. I. Scofield, D. D. 

Aut «^ ? f " The Scofield Bible Correspondence Course" 
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth," "Plain 
Papers on the Holy Spirit," "Addresses on 
Prophecy," etc.; Editor of "The Sco- 
field Reference Bible." 




Chicago 

The Bible Institute Colportage Association 

826 North La Salle Street 



&& 



4 



COPYRIGHT 1915, BY 
THE BIBLE INSTITUTE COLPORTAGE 
ASSOCIATION OF CHICAGO 



i 






JUL 2'i ISI5 









^ 



To My Wife 

Who has been my untiring helper in what- 
ever I have said or written for thirty-one 
blessed years. Always abiding in the min- 
istries of a Christian home, she has left to 
me the thanks and prayers of those who have 
been blessed through our joint labours, con- 
tent so only that Christ was exalted. 



To the Reader 

All of the matter composing this book was preached to 
my congregations in my two pastorates at Dallas, Texas, 
and Northfield, Massachusetts, and all, save the ad- 
dress on "The Imparted Life," were published first in 
the "Dallas News." These, re-printed in "The Chris- 
tian Worker's Magazine," awoke a desire which seemed 
to be unusually widespread that these teachings con- 
cerning the New Life in Christ Jesus might be collected 
into a book. This, by arrangement with The Bible In- 
stitute Colportage Association, has now been done. 

The book is here and now committed to the care of 
Him whom it seeks to exalt in the fervent prayer that 
through His grace it may show the way into happy, 
victorious, fruitful Christian living to many in bondage. 

C. I. SCOFIELD 
Greyshingles 

Douglaston, N. Y, 

April, 1915. 



Contents 

Chap. Page 

I. The Inner Life 11 

II. The Imparted Life 24» 

III. The Tragedy of the Inner Life 33 

IV. The Delivered Life 45 

V. The Larger Christian Life 56 

VI. The Spirit-Controlled Life 67 

VII. The Joyous Life 75 

VIII. True Consecration 85 

IX. Defilement and Cleansing 100 



I 

The Inner Life 

Text: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but 
now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself." — Job 
42:5, 6. 

SOMEONE has called the Book of Job 
"The Epic of the Inner Life." It is most 
felicitous. We all know that there is an 
inner life; that within the barriers of our be- 
ing, behind all activities and externalities, we 
ourselves live. We all know that there is trans- 
acted the real life. We all know that there we 
are solitary, that there every man is a hermit. 
And while this, past all controversy, is true, 
in another sense this strange inner life is im- 
mensely populous. Passions, desires, tempta- 
tions, lurid and demoniacal thoughts, angelic 
thoughts, prayers, adorations, mean selfish- 
nesses, wrestle and plead, and it is into this 
chaos that faith brings the nature of God, and 
the life of the risen Christ, and the immense 
peace and power and joy of the Holy Spirit's 

11 



12 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

indwelling. And we all know that when we 
have received eternal lif e we have written but 
the first chapter in the new history of the in- 
ner life. New conflicts, new victories, alas! 
new defeats, too. 

The most commonplace Christian whom you 
know is transacting in the recesses of his be- 
ing an epic. 

And we know that this inner life is, finally, 
the source and spring of the outer life. It is, 
of course, possible to keep these dissimilar for 
years, but soon or late the inner life becomes 
determinative of the external life. It is with 
this life, therefore, that God most concerns 
Himself. It is the distinctive characteristic of 
the gospel dispensation. "Now is the ax laid 
to the root of the tree," says the forerunner, 
John. "Make the tree good, and his fruit 
good," is almost the opening word of Christ. 
It was always so, indeed. "Behold, thou de- 
sirest truth in the inward parts." "The Lord 
pondereth the heart." 

I can not, I think, do better than to take the 
last chapter of the Book of Job for my point 
of departure, verses 5 and 6: 



THE INNER LIFE 13 

"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the 
ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore 
I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 
It is 

THE CRISIS OF THE TROUBLED PATRIARCH 

The thing itself is very simple. "I have 
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear." There 
was a testimony concerning God which had 
come to Job, and upon which he had based a 
true faith and a good life. Ordinarily, Chris- 
tian experience has just that history. There 
is a record concerning Christ, His person and 
work. It is God's testimony, and we receive it 
and set to our seal that God is true. We are 
saved. It is a very real faith, though a faith 
based wholly upon testimony, the hearing of 
the ear. That was the faith of Job down to 
the very last chapter. 

Here was a godly man whose outward life 
was so blameless that God could challenge the 
malice of Satan himself to find a flaw in it. 
Nor was he but negatively good. He was a 
good man in the positive sense. His life 
counted on the right and helpful side of things, 



14 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

Then began that strange dealing of God, 
that permitted chastening, which has been the 
mystery in so many other lives. How strange a 
thing that the best man of his time should be 
the most troubled; should be the man upon 
whom, as it seemed, the hand of God lay most 
heavily. And the fact, as you know, called out 
various interpretations. The opinion of Satan 
concerning this man's goodness and usefulness 
was that he was a mere hireling. "Hast not 
thou made an hedge about him?" You have 
given him unusual prosperity, and in a certain 
sense you have bribed him. That was Satan's 
opinion. That was a lie. And God permitted 
Satan to demonstrate the falsity of his theory 
of this man's life. God said, in effect, "Take 
away the hedge"; and then you know what 
happened: his property went, his children 
went, and yet the integrity of the man re- 
mained. He did not curse God. And then 
Satan fell back upon another theory which was 
just as false as the other. He said: "Skin for 
skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for 
his life." You have left the man his health. 
"Put forth now thine hand, and touch his bone 



THE INNER LIFE 15 

and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy 
face." And so that was permitted. His health 
went, grievous pains fell upon him. Bereft of 
property, bereft of family, bereft of health, 
and yet this man, with a faith which was 
founded upon a hearing about God, main- 
tained his integrity. 

And then came the theories of his friends. 
They agreed in the belief that there must be 
in his life some secret sin, although he had suc- 
ceeded in covering it from human vision. They 
were very sure that the only explanation of the 
sorrows which were falling so heavily upon 
him was, that he was a hypocrite; was not as 
good as he seemed to be, and upon that belief 
they argued the question with him. But Job 
knew that also to be false, and he made good 
his contention that he was not a hypocrite. 

A VISION OF GOD 

And now we come to the real epic of his in- 
ner life. God Himself took up the matter. 
And if you follow the closing chapters of this 
wonderful Book of Job, you will find the whole 



16 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

mechanics, so to speak, of the deeper dealing of 
God with the inner life of a saint whom He is 
about to make saintly. 

There was, first of all, the unveiling of His 
power, His majesty, His greatness. 

"Then the Lord answered Job out of the 
whirlwind. * * * Where wast thou when 
I laid the foundations of the earth? * * * 
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fast- 
ened? or who laid the cornerstone thereof, 
when the morning stars sang together, and all 
the sons of God shouted for joy? * * * 
Hast thou commanded the morning since the 
days, and caused the dayspring to know his 
place? Knowest thou the ordinances of heav- 
en? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the 
earth? * * * Wilt thou also disannul my 
judgment ?" 

Ah, poor Job ! Thou wert able to maintain 
thy cause against Satan and against man, but 
what wilt thou answer to God? What, indeed, 
can Job say before this personal manifestation 
of God Himself but that which he did say: 

"I have heard of thee by the hearing of 



THE INNER LIFE 17 

the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Where- 
fore I abhor myself." 

THE UTTER COLLAPSE OF SELF 

Yes, fellow-man, thyself. Now the secret is 
out. 

It was not at all something Job had done, 
it was what Job was. Job himself was wrong. 
He had never judged self before God. He 
had not the sentence of death in himself. The 
interpretative chapter of Job is the twenty- 
ninth. The personal pronoun occurs forty- 
eight times in twenty-five verses. He was a 
good man, but he was too much aware of it, 
and he was in deep darkness as to the real 
state of his soul, of his inner life before God. 
And nothing, not the depth of his affliction, 
nor the reproaches of his friends, nor his own 
self-communings ever brought him to see him- 
self. But when he passed from a knowledge 
about God to a personal acquaintance with 
God there was nothing to be said but the de- 
spairing: 

"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the 



18 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore 
I abhor myself." 

The revelation of God, bringing a real sense 
of personal unworthiness and demerit, is what 
I think essentially we have in this experience 
of Job. It is not in exercises of self about 
self; not in any efforts of Job to discover the 
mystery of his inner life, that he comes to real 
self -consciousness ; but it was the vision of God 
Himself which, flooding his inner being, 
brought the humbling, hateful vision of self. 

A NEW AND HIGHER SERVICE 

And then the most astonishing thing of all 
happened. God took up the vindication and 
restoration of the man who abhorred himself! 

"The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, 
My wrath is kindled against thee and against 
thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of 
me the thing that is right, as my servant Job 
hath." 

And then, as you know, God made of Job 
a priest through whom alone the three re- 
proachful moralizers could approach His of- 
fended holiness. 



THE INNER LIFE 19 

"My servant Job shall pray for you, and 
him will I accept." 

You see, we have essentially four things 
here: First, the vision of God; secondly, the 
utter collapse of self ; thirdly, a new and higher 
service; and lastly, a doubled fruitfulness. 

"Also the Lord gave Job twice as much as 
he had before." 

Now I believe we have here an order which 
is invariable, and I am very sure that we have 
here an experience which is not exceptional. 

Oh, beloved, we too have heard of Him by 
the hearing of the ear, but we need to come to 
deeper things, closer things, with God. We 
need to come to that personal and underived 
acquaintanceship with Him, so that we may 
say with the men of Samaria, "Now we believe 
not because of thy saying; for we have heard 
him ourselves, and know that this is indeejl the 
Christ," although the first effect of it will be 
this awful humbling, this utter collapse of self. 
But oh, how blessed a place is that valley of 
humbling. No one falls there who does not 
rise to newness of life and service. But re- 






20 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

member, it costs the sentence of death in self; 
the thorough reconstruction of the inner life. 

NOT AN ISOLATED EXPERIENCE 

It will help us in interpreting this experience 
to see that it came, not to Job alone, but to 
every man greatly used of God. The circum- 
stances differ but the essence is the same — God 
is realized, self-strength is turned into helpless- 
ness, new power and blessing are given. Josh- 
ua fell at the feet of the Man with the drawn 
sword (Josh. 5:13-15) ; Isaiah must cry, "Woe 
is me" (Isa. 6:5-8), only to be cleansed and 
recommissioned ; Jeremiah must learn that he 
"cannot speak" before the Lord will touch his 
mouth (Jer. 1:6-10); Ezekiel, prostrated by 
the glory, must fall on his face in the collapse 
of self before the Spirit can fill him, and Je- 
hovah can say, "I send thee" (Ezek. 1:28; 
2:1-10) ; Daniel must say, "I saw . . . and 
my comeliness was turned in me into corrup- 
tion" (Dan. 10:5-12). Even John the Be- 
loved, before the vision of the glorified Christ, 
must fall "at his feet as one dead" before the 



THE INNER LIFE 21 

"right hand" can be laid upon him, and he can 
hear the "fear not." 

I wish now to gather up briefly what all this 
means. And first of all, 

TWO THINGS WHICH IT IS NOT 

It is neither the entire eradication of the 
flesh, the death, the extinction of self, nor is it 
sinless perfection. Self is abhorred, distrusted, 
detested, set at naught. But so uniform are 
the characteristics of this experience, whatever 
the age or dispensation, that it is not difficult to 
state both the result accomplished and the 
steps by which it is wrought. 

1. We have, then, in this supreme experi- 
ence, the revelation of God Himself to the soul. 
It is not something about God; some new tes- 
timony concerning God, or some lesson of 
sorrow or trial. It is God's own act, His self- 
revelation of something which testimony had 
never communicated to heart or conscience, so 
that there is a new and intense apprehension of 
himself. 

2. The instances quoted from the Scrip- 



22 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

tures agree, too, in the effect of this unveiling 
of God. Before that vision of God self is ab- 
horred. So absolute is this effect that, as we 
have seen, it is constantly spoken of as the ut- 
ter deprivation of strength. The self-life is 
not slain, but it is so seen in that glory as never 
again io be trusted, or in any way counted on 
in the things of God. As Paul said: "We had 
the sentence of death in ourselves, that we 
should not trust in ourselves, but in God, which 
raiseth the dead," in the God of the resurrec- 
tion, in the God of the new, undying life. 

3. In agreement, too, are the biblical in- 
stances that this destruction of self-confidence 
is followed by the infilling with the strength 
of Him who was dead and is alive again. Not 
once is the man on his face before the awful, 
beautiful vision left prostrate. "I received 
strength," is the unvarying testimony. 

4. And then comes the new and higher ser- 
vice. This is the blessed consummation; this 
and the new fruitfulness. 

Could I covet anything better for you than 
that you should see God face to face? Than 



THE INNER LIFE 23 

that there should come to you this highest word 
in the epic of the inner life? May He grant it, 
for His name's sake. 



II 

The Imparted Life 

Text: "I am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." — John 10:10. 

THIS was the new note in the message 
of Jesus Christ. It fell, for the most 
part, upon uncomprehending ears. 
After nineteen centuries of alleged gospel 
preaching it is still for the most part uncom- 
prehended. 

That Christ was a teacher of ethics, as in the 
Sermon on the Mount, is understood. That 
He died for our sins is, as a fact, understood. 
That He changed the issue from righteousness 
by works to righteousness by faith, moving the 
centre from Mount Sinai in Arabia to Mount 
Calvary in Judea, is understood, though halt- 
ingly, but that He came to impart to believing 
human beings a new quality of life, even the 
very life which was and is in Himself — this is 
not understood. 

Eternal life is, indeed, much spoken of, but 

24 



THE IMPARTED LIFE 25 

it is understood to mean mere duration of be- 
ing — the persistency of life notwithstanding 
the fact of physical death. 

In the teaching of Jesus Christ, as in the 
apostolic writings, the eternal life imparted by 
Christ to all who believe in Him, is indeed a 
term implying endlessness of life, but, since 
endlessness is also a quality of mere human 
life, eternal life is, far more emphatically, a 
term of quality, of kind. 

The ministry of John the Baptist also had 
its startling message, "And now also the ax is 
laid unto the root of the trees." There was 
to be no more experimentation with the old 
Adamic tree, no more seeking of fruit from a 
stock that, after centuries of testing, could 
produce but wild fruit. "Make the tree good" 
is the new word, and this can only be done by 
giving the tree a new life and nature. "That 
which is born of the flesh is flesh," and can 
never be made aught else. The old man under 
the new gospel is to be crucified with Christ, 
not improved by higher ideals. "They that 
are in the flesh cannot please God." The 
Adamic taint forbids it, and is ineradicable. 



26 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

Two tilings are said by Christ in this tenth 
chapter of John: He gives his life for the 
sheep (vs. 11, 15, 17), and this is redemption; 
and He gives His life to the sheep (vs. 28) and 
this is regeneration. 

Precisely this duality is found in the third 
chapter. The sheep are under a two-fold dis- 
ability: they are "perishing" under the curse 
and sentence of the law, and must be redeemed 
by one able and willing to be "made a curse" 
in their stead; but also they are born of the 
flesh and therefore mere flesh-men, unable to 
"see'' or "enter" the kingdom of God, and for 
this there is no remedy save in a re-birth. 

But precisely these two needs are met by the 
gospel of the love of God; the Son of man 
must be lifted up on the cross to redeem the 
perishing, and the Holy Spirit imparts the di- 
vine nature and the new life to all who believe 
on the Son of man as crucified for their sins. 

THE NEW LIFE IS CHRIST'S LIFE 

Mere endlessness of being would not be 
"eternal" life. Eternal is "from everlasting to 
everlasting." Only He who "was in the begin- 



THE IMPARTED LIFE 27 

ning with God * * * was God" would be- 
stow, through the eternal Spirit, eternal life. 

And this imparted life is His own life. "I 
am the vine, ye are the branches." What a 
symbol of unity of life is the vine with its 
branches. The branch has no independent 
source of life. The life of the vine and the life 
of the branch are one. All possibility of re- 
newal, of growth, of f ruitfulness depends upon 
the life energy of the vine. Well might the 
vine say to the branch, "Because I live, ye shall 
live also." 

It would not be possible to state more 
strongly than does our Lord this identity in 
life of Himself and those who through faith 
in Him crucified have been born again. "As * 
* * I live by the Father: so he that eateth 
me, even he shall live by me." "As thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also 
may be one in us." "I in them, and thou in 
me." 

The vital suggestions are, if possible, even 
more intense in our Lord's simile of "the corn 
of wheat." Just as a grain of wheat sown dies, 
indeed, yet dies into countless grains of wheat, 



28 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

giving its own life to each, so Christ speaks of 
His own death. 

And this testimony to oneness of life with 
Christ pervades the apostolic explanation of 
the gospel. The church is declared to be His 
body. The human body, composed of many 
members, is the figure used to express the one- 
ness with Him of the "many members" who 
constitute, like the members of the natural 
body, one organism, and this organism is called 
"Christ" (1 Cor. 12:12). It is declared of 
Christ, not only that He gave life to the be- 
liever, but that He "is our life." And John 
declares the record to be "that God hath given 
to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." 

THE INLIVING CHRIST TO BE OUTLIVED 

God expects nothing from the flesh — the 
self -man. In the divine reckoning our old man 
was crucified with Christ. The old man is 
summed up in one terrific word of three let- 
ters — sin. Acts of sin proceed from a nature 
which is sin. 

In one great and luminous passage the Holy 
Spirit through the Apostle Paul states, in the 



THE IMPARTED LIFE 29 

terms of the apostle's actual experience, the 
fact and method of the new life: "I am cruci- 
fied with Christ." This is a fact of revelation 
not a fact of consciousness. Paul does not 
"feel" crucified, but in the divine reckoning he 
is counted so, and this the apostle also reckons 
to be true. God expects nothing from the old 
Saul of Tarsus, and in the seventh of Romans 
experience the apostle has learned the final 
truth about Saul : "In me, that is in my flesh, 
dwelleth no good thing." 

Then comes a fact of consciousness, "Nev- 
ertheless I live," followed by another fact of 
revelation, "Christ liveth in me." Saul lives as 
yet, but death or the return of Christ will be 
the end of the Saul life, and Christ also lives in 
Paul. 

Then comes the practical, present outcome 
of it all, "The life which I now live in the 
flesh" (body). How shall that life be lived? 
The Holy Spirit gives an answer to which, 
speaking broadly, the church has never risen. 

THE METHOD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

Two theories of Christian living here on 



30 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

earth have measured, and do measure, the aver- 
age faith. 

First, life by precept, by rule. There is a 
large truth here. The Bible is a great in- 
struction in righteousness; a great revelation 
of the mind of God about human life. No in- 
ner light can take the place of the divine rev- 
elation. It is perfect ethically and also com- 
plete. 

But it has the fatal defect of furnishing no 
dynamic. "The law made nothing perfect." 
Precept gives a perfect rule of life, and by it 
life must always be tested, but precept carries 
no enablement. "The law * * * was weak 
through the flesh." A chart does not carry 
us across the ocean, but it shows us where we 
are on the trackless deep, and where to go. 
The life by precept was tried under law and 
left the whole world of humanity in speechless 
guilt before God. 

Still more hopeless is the notion of life by 
the example of Christ. "What would Christ 
do?" is the formula. As to immoralities, self- 
ishness, worldliness, the answer is easy. In all 
the real crises of life it utterly breaks down. 



THE IMPARTED LIFE 31 

Our conclusions as to what Christ would do 
are vitiated by our limitations of habit of 
thought, of unspirituality, of ignorance of 
Christ. In His earth-life He constantly did the 
things that shocked every religionist in Pales- 
tine — Pharisee, Sadducee, Herodian. He did 
not do the things they thought He ought to do, 
but every day did something they thought in- 
consistent with His Messiahship. 

What then is Christian living? It is Christ 
living out His life in the terms of our person- 
ality, and under the conditions which environ 
us. We do not ask, "What would Christ do?" 
we say to self, "Let not I," and yield our 
powers to the sway of the inliving Christ. "Al- 
ways bearing about in the body the putting to 
death of the Lord Jesus," (the practical ex- 
pression of our co-crucifixion with Him being 
"having no confidence in the flesh"), "that the 
life also of Jesus might be made manifest in 
our body." 

And we are not to be discouraged by fail- 
ures. Not all at once does Christ gain com- 
plete control over powers and faculties accus- 



32 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

tomed to the rule of self; but, "walking in the 
Spirit/ ' there assuredly comes an increasing 
sense of peace, rest, joy. 



Ill 

The Tragedy of the Inner Life 

Text: "For to will is present with me, but how to perform 
that which is good, I find not." — Rom. 7:18. 

THAT is the tragedy of the inner life; 
the breakdown of the human will be- 
fore the Christian ethic; the torment 
of an unattained ideal. 

The defeat of a languid desire is nothing; 
but to throw the whole power of the will on the 
side of something which God commands, and 
then to find the will break down, that, for an 
earnest soul, is tragic beyond words. 

It is a very common mistake to suppose 
that we could be holy if we only wanted to. 
We think our difficulty lies in bringing the 
will to act on the side of what God requires, 
and that if we really put forth sufficient will 
power we should enter upon a spiritual life. 
But here is a man who makes the amazing dis- 
covery that the spiritual life is something 

33 



34 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

above the reach of his will at its highest 
stretch. He can not grasp spirituality and 
bring it down into his life by willing to do it. 
And this was the experience, let us remember, 
of one of the strongest wills that ever was 
lodged in a human character. The Apostle 
Paul was not a weakling; he was endowed 
with immense will power. When he was a 
mere 

RELIGIONIST AND NOT A CHRISTIAN 

he was not a lax nor a languid one. He saw 
that the great enemy of the traditionalism in 
which he had been reared was this new thing, 
Christianity ; and his imperious will forced him 
into the very front of the fight against Christi- 
anity; made of him "the tiger of the Sanhe- 
drim/' Nothing deterred him — no weeping of 
women, no plaint of age, or youth; he put 
Christian men and women in prison, and when 
the question was one of stoning them to death 
he gave his vote against them. No, Paul was 
never a half-and-half man. There was in him 
not merely a fullness of intellectual vigor and 
life that compelled him to take sides, but there 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER IIFE 35 

was in him a force of will that enabled him to 
accomplish his desires. 

But here was a seemingly simple thing that 
he was not able to do; but now he has before 
him an ideal which is unattainable by the 
power of his resolution. "To will is present 
with me," he says, "but how to perform that 
which is good, I find not." He can not will 
himself into spirituality. 

what is "good"? 

That is the case before us. But we shall 
never understand what Paul means unless we 
stop for a moment to consider his little word 
"good." What is this good that Paul can not 
do by willing to do it? We may exclude some 
things at once. He is not speaking here of 
morality, of honesty, of kindliness, of chastity, 
of faithfulness in the relations in which man 
stands to man, as husband, as parent, as 
friend. These things lie completely within the 
power of the will. Every one of us has known 
men wholly apart from Christian power and 
Christian influence who were all of these 



36 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

things. Every community has upright, truth- 
ful, honest, kindly, courageous, helpful, clean, 
high-living men who are not Christians. 
The Apostle Paul is not speaking of those 
good qualities at all; all those things he had 
done all his life; his will had proved effective 
in that sphere. 

And neither is he thinking, by this word 
good, of common religiousness, church-mem- 
bership, church-going, saying prayers, read- 
ing the Bible, giving money; all these things 
he had done all his life by will power. He 
was the foremost religionist of his time, by a 
conscientious use of his will. 

Well, then, what does he mean by speaking 
of the good which he wills but can not attain? 
He means such things as this : "For to me to 
live is Christ, and to die is gain." And this: 
"I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I 
live ; yet not I but Christ, liveth in me ; and the 
life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the 
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and 
gave himself for me." That is what he is think- 
ing about — the 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 37 
REPRODUCTION OF CHRIST BEFORE MEN 

—of being Christlike. That is what he calls 
"good." Did Paul mean, then, that he was de- 
feated in a will to be Christlike — not as good 
as Christ, but good like Christ in measure? 
Yes. 

He had before his mind, to illustrate it 
further, perhaps, the beatic character. He had 
read the Sermon on the Mount, and we may- 
be very sure that he put it into its right place, 
dispensationally, but he was not willing for one 
moment to say that because he was in grace 
and in the church, and not in the kingdom 
and not under law, that therefore he was justi- 
fied in living on a lower level than the kingdom 
life — rather he would say, " a higher demand 
is laid upon me." 

And while there was not in his mind all this 
negative and inferior morality, there was in 
his mind the spiritual morality which forms the 
Christian standard. "Blessed are the poor in 
spirit," he would say, and then I can imagine 
that he would beat upon his breast and say, 
"Oh, proud Paul! Oh, Paul, when will you 



38 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

ever be poor in spirit?" And then, perhaps, 
in the earlier stages of his experience he would 
say, "I will be poor in spirit." 

"Blessed are the meek." "Oh," he would 
say afterward, "I am the chief of sinners. 
When I read that word meek, I dare not lift 
my eyes to him — I can not." Did you, my 
hearer, every try to be meek? If you did, did 
you succeed? It is open to any one to act 
meekly, to go around with a kind of 

URIAH HEEP 'UMBLENESS 

but that only makes a hateful Pharisee of you ; 
that is not being meek. And if there is any- 
thing that Jesus Christ hates, it is Pharisee- 
ism; that is the one thing He can not do any- 
thing with. The only word he had for the 
Pharisee of his day was, "Woe unto you." He 
had no messages for them; there was nothing 
in his gospel for a Pharisee. No, Paul is not 
going back to Phariseeism. And, deeper than 
that there was in Paul's heart, when he talked 
about being good, the imperious demand 
which his new nature and the urge of the new 
life made upon him that he should have victory 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 39 

over self in all the forms in which self mani- 
fests itself. 

Now in the face of a standard as exalted as 
the Christlike life there is 

A GRAVE DANGER 

That danger must have been present to Paul, 
and I have no doubt he had to resist it and to 
cry mightily to God about it; the danger, I 
mean, of saying or thinking that the Christ 
standard is too high ; that it was put there, not 
to attain to, but as an ideal toward which we 
are to aspire. We are to consent to it that it 
is good, but for flesh to expect to attain to it is 
another thing. Well, here was a man who 
was minded to live that kind of a life, some- 
how, and never let himself go till he did. 

There is a saying, you know, that if you aim 
your arrow at the moon you won't hit the 
moon, but you will shoot higher than if you 
aimed your arrow at a barn. Well, Paul never 
let himself down by any poor sophistry like 
that. You and I do, my friends. 

Now I want to pass on to 



40 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 
A VERY PRACTICAL QUESTION 

What does Paul mean by saying, "To will 
is present with me, but how to perform that 
which is good, I find not"? I have heard all 
my Christian lif e the statement that Christians 
are not to live in the seventh of Romans. Well, 
I would to God that nine out of ten of them 
go into the seventh of Romans. The man in 
the seventh of Romans is not a listless dweller 
in spiritual things; he is a man whose heart is 
breaking and whose being is in agony because 
his life is not like Christ's! The man in the 
seventh of Romans is a man who was all red 
with the blood of the Son of God. He knew 
that he was wrestling with something that was 
awful and real, and he was bound to have the 
solution for this problem if God has one for 
him. I ask, what does this man need who 
wills and resolves to do good, and then finds 
himself defeated? Does he need more ethics? 
A higher standard? Why, the poor man 
knows more good now than he is doing; and 
just there is the weakness of mere ethical 
preaching. It continually says to the poor 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 41 

sinner, "Be good," but never tells him how to 
be good. And the pulpit today is largely en- 
gaged with telling people to "be good" and not 
telling them how. 

We come to him with the Ten Command- 
ments and say, "Why, Paul, I do not know 
what is the matter with you; you seem beside 
yourself with all this talk about not being able 
to be good. Here are the Commandments." 
And he says, "But I know them; I have known 
them from my youth up, and I delight in them 
after the inner man, but I can not keep even 
them." No, law can not help him. Law says, 
"Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not," but it 
adds nothing to the force and power of man; 
nothing whatever. Well, what does he need? 

NOT ETHICS, BUT DYNAMICS 

The man needs superhuman power to enable 
him to realize in his life a superhuman spiritu- 
ality* 

Now, when any one says, as an objection to 
Christianity, that the ethical demand of Chris- 
tianity is too high for human nature, he has 
just begun to find out the truth; a truth that 



42 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

about eight out of every ten Christians never 
do find out. It is too high for human nature. 
It is meant to be too high for human nature. 
It is put where no hand of man can ever touch 
it; where no unassisted human capacity can 
ever reach it. And if that were all, the gospel 
would be to the saint, whatever it may be to 
the sinner, a message of despair. But that is 
not all. 

Along with this superhuman demand, super- 
human power is offered. And Paul laid hold 
upon it. He did not stay in the seventh of 
Romans, for when the will is aroused to its 
utmost power and yet can not do a thing, then 
the man has reached the end of himself. 

AT PEACE AND VICTORIOUS 

When we pass from the seventh to the eighth 
of Romans we find the wretched man of the 
seventh of Romans at peace and victorious; 
what is now his testimony? "The law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me 
free from the law of sin and death." Not a 
new resolution, nor a new habit, nor a deeper 
hold on himself, nor more prayer. Do you 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE INNER LIFE 43 

think that a man in the agony of the seventh 
of Romans does not pray? Why, the Apostle 
Paul, when he was there, prayed, you may be 
sure, day and night on his face before God. 
Not more prayer, nor more anything that you 
and I can do, nor that Paul could do, but 
something that God can do. 

THERE IS THE REMEDY 

That is what Paul means: not more from 
within, but something from without put with- 
in. And almost while he is saying, "Oh, 
wretched man that I am," out of the very 
agony of spiritual defeat, he lifts up his face 
in triumphant testimony for he has found the 
secret, and he says, "The law of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from 
the law of sin and death." 

So this man can write afterward, "For me 
to live is Christ"; write it to Philippians who 
knew him more intimately than you know me. 
"The life which now I live in the flesh, I live 
by the faith of the Son of God" he could say 
to those Galatians who had seen him under 
trial and testing, "Not by my efforts, nor by 



44 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

my resolutions, nor by my vows, but by the 
power, the authority, the law, of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus." 

Defeated along the line of the will, he is vic- 
torious by the power of the Spirit within him; 
the superhuman standard achieved by super- 
human power. Paul laid hold upon that 
power, and so we have the triumphant eighth 
chapter of Romans, which may be the experi- 
ence of every child of God — a life of continual 
victory, peace and power. 



IV 

The Delivered Life 

Text: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be 
free indeed."— John 8:36. 

THE most widespread and universal of 
the delusions current among men is 
the notion that they are free. No 
imputation is more quickly, more vehemently 
resented than the imputation of slavery, of 
bondage. There are no free men. Millions, 
thank God, are in the process of emancipation, 
but none are yet completely emancipated. 
Paul told the Roman chief captain that he 
was born free. In the limited sense in which 
he used the word it was true ; Paul was born a 
Roman citizen. But in every other important 
sense the words were not true, as Paul would 
have been the first to admit. Like all of us, 
Paul inherited chains. For centuries that 
mysterious force, heredity, had been silently, 
invisibly, preparing bonds for him — bonds for 
spirit, soul, body. Every soul born into the 

45 



46 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

world is born into an invisible net which the 
centuries have been weaving for him. Its 
meshes are race predisposition, race habit, f am* 
ily habit, family sin, family religion. 

Think of the men to whom Christ was talk- 
ing when He uttered the words of our text. 
"We be Abraham's seed, and were never in 
bondage to any man." They spoke honestly 
enough, as we do when we boast of our free- 
dom, but at that moment they were in political, 
intellectual and religious bondage. 

Politically, they were under bondage to an 
assortment of despots from Caesar down to 
Herod and Pilate. Morally, they were the 
slaves of race pride, of prejudice, of ignorance, 
of habit, of sin, of self-will. Religiously, they 
were the slaves of traditionalism, of bigotry, of 
formalism. 

WE ARE SLAVES OF PARTY 

Is our case better? Very slightly. Theoret- 
ically, we are free politically. Actually, we are 
the slaves of party, of the caucus, of the bosses. 
The very minute I give over into the hands of 
a convention the right to formulate my polit- 



THE DELIVERED LIFE 47 

ical creed I am no longer absolutely free. 
When I take my opinions, my convictions, con- 
cerning morals or religion second-hand from 
other men, whether they are men of today or 
men of the Reformation period, or of the early 
church councils, I am no longer free. 

(When I allow a habit to dominate my life, 
I am no longer free. When I allow pride or 
vanity, or ambition, or pleasure to control my 
life, I am the basest of slaves. The very fact 
that I do not, can not, of myself, cease from 
sin proclaims me a slave. Jesus Christ came 
into a world of slaves. 

CHRIST THE EMANCIPATOR 

It is interesting to note that His first formal 
announcement of His mission on earth touched 
life at that very point. In the synagogue at 
Nazareth there was handed to Him the book 
of the Prophet Isaiah, and He found the place 
where it was written: "The spirit of the Lord 
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to 
preach * * * deliverance to the captives." 

He begins with our slavery to sin. And here 



48 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

He encounters an initial difficulty. The man 
whom He would set free is not only a slave, but 
a condemned slave. He is a slave, exposed for 
sale, but with a halter round his neck. Who 
will redeem him? Nay, rather, who can re- 
deem him? Not his brother man, for he too is 
a slave with a halter round his own neck. 
"What is the price of this slave? of that one?" 
One price for all. Whoever will redeem these 
slaves must die in their stead. And, obviously, 
only one who has never sinned, and who is him- 
self perfectly free, can be accepted. Only one 
being has ever appeared who met these neces- 
sary conditions — Jesus Christ. And, to pay 
that price is the very business that brought 
Jesus Christ to this earth. At the cost of His 
own life, of His own unimaginable suffering, 
He pays the last demand of a holy law and re- 
deems from death the slaves of sin. 

Are they free from the curse of the law? 
Yes. From the habit of sin? No. Then begin 
those great redemptive processes which work 
in the sphere of the inner life, the object of 
which is the transformation of character and 
complete deliverance from the dominion of sin. 



THE DELIVERED LIFE 49 

THE PROCESS OF DELIVERANCE 

It begins with the complete removal of fear. 
The believer is told that he is not under law, 
that is, a system of probation to see if he can 
work out a righteousness for himself, but un- 
der grace, that is, a system of divine inwork- 
ing, which produces the very righteousness 
which the law required, but which man never 
achieved. The believer is assured that Christ 
has given to him eternal lif e, and that he shall 
never perish ; that nothing is able to pluck him 
out of the omnipotent hand which holds him; 
that He who began a good work in him will 
perfect it till the day of Christ. As for his 
sins; they are blotted out, cast behind God's 
back, buried in the depths of the sea, forgiven 
and forgotten. And this is a necessary first 
work, for no man is really free who is under the 
bondage of fear. 

Then grace imparts to the believer the in- 
dwelling Holy Spirit. The nature that was 
open to every assault from without, and a slave 
to every vile impulse from within is now gar- 
risoned by omnipotence. In the power of that 



50 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

indwelling One, the believer is made free from 
the monstrous necessity of sinning under which 
every unredeemed life groans, No Christian 
needs to sin. If he yields to solicitations from 
without, or the more subtle suggestions from 
within, it is because he deliberately or care- 
lessly wills it so. The Spirit is there to break 
the power of sin. 

GRACE AND THE INSPIRATION OF NEW RELATION- 
SHIP 

Then grace puts the renewed life under the 
stimulus and inspiration of great relationships. 
The believer is not merely a pardoned criminal, 
he is a child and son of God ; and that by a new 
birth which is as actual in the sphere of the 
spiritual as his natural birth was in the sphere 
of the physical. He is a son of God, not by 
some far-off fact of creation, but by the imme- 
diate and personal fact of a divine begetting. 
He no longer traces his descent from God 
through Adam, but is, as Adam was, a son of 
God with no intervening ancestor. 

This, the believer is told, brings him into the 
wonderful privileges of access to the Father, 



THE DELIVERED LIFE 51 

and of fellowship with Him. Christ is not 
ashamed to call him "brother"; he is raised to 
joint heirship with Christ in all things, and is 
to share the power and glory of Christ in the 
coming kingdom. 

Grace confers upon the believer the great 
offices of priest and king. As priest he is set 
free from the ancient formalism in the worship 
of God "entering into the holiest by the blood 
of Jesus," and offering, without regard to time 
or place, "spiritual sacrifices, acceptable unto 
God through Jesus Christ." His worship, 
freed from ceremonialism, is a son's adoration 
of a Father who is infinite in holiness and be- 
nevolence and power, but who is none the less 
a Father because He is God. And this office 
of priest carries of necessity the privilege of in- 
tercession. The believer-priest prays for those 
outside the family of God who do not pray for 
themselves. He is the daysman and remem- 
brancer before his Father of the unbelieving 
world. 

Grace tells the believer that he is as vitally 
united to Christ as the members of his own 
body are united to him. "By one Spirit are 



52 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

we all baptized into one body." "He that is 
joined unto the Lord is one Spirit." 

WHAT TRUE FREEDOM IS 

But Christian freedom is not anarchy, which 
is the mere riot of self-will, but it is to be so 
joined to God the Father; so vitally one with 
Christ the Son ; so yielding to the gentle sway 
of the Holy Spirit, that the human will is 
blended into the divine will, and so made one 
with the absolutely free and sovereign will of 
God Himself. God does as He wills, but God 
always wills to do that which is at once abso- 
lutely right and absolutely benevolent. 

And in all this there is no subversion of the 
believer's individuality, but the lifting of that 
individuality to the divine level of a passionate 
love of all that is lovely. It is obedience, but 
obedience under the new covenant, where the 
law is written in the heart, like mother-love. 
A mother finds her highest joy in obedience 
to that imperative born into her deepest being 
with the birth of her child. 

No truly honest man feels the constraint of 
the laws against theft. He is not honest be- 



THE DELIVERED LIFE 53 

cause of something printed in a statute book, 
but because of something printed on his heart. 
He would still be honest if the statute were 
repealed. And therefore he is perfectly free. 
Without that interior work no external thing 
done to a man makes or can make him feel free. 
Executive clemency extended to a convicted 
criminal does not make him a free man. He is 
still the slave of his criminal desires. But if 
he falls in love with honesty and uprightness 
and integrity, then he is free. All this trans- 
formation grace works in the redeemed heart. 

THE NEW IDEAE OF LIFE 

Then grace works transformingly by the 
power of new and exalted ideals. The whole 
conception of life is changed. Under the old 
bondage life was conceived of as a possession 
which man might rightly use for himself ; under 
the new ideal life is precious because it may be 
used for the blessing of others. The new man 
in Christ has accepted as the new ideal of his 
new life Christ's law of sacrifice. He heartily 
adopts Christ's formulae: "The Son of man 
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 



54 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

and to give his life a ransom for many"; "He 
that will save his life shall lose it, but he that 
will lose his life for my sake, shall find it"; 
"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bring- 
eth forth much fruit." 

Such an ideal, heartily accepted, under the 
conviction that so only may life be nobly lived, 
works of itself toward disenthralment from the 
old slavery of self. 

Pursued, though with many a failure, and 
with steps which often halt, such an ideal is a 
transformation. The man who accepts it has 
issued to the universe his declaration of in- 
dependence. He is free from the old appeals 
and solicitations which had power over him 
because they seemed to promise something 
toward the old monstrous ministry to the god 
self. No longer desiring self-exaltation or self- 
pleasing, the bride has ceased to appeal. Its 
presentment only causes pain to the heart that 
has fallen in love with humility. 

THE VISION OF ETERNITY 

Then grace allures and charms with the 



THE DELIVERED LIFE 55 

vision of eternal things. Paul divides all things 
into two categories, things seen and things un- 
seen, and he declares that the seen things have 
the fatal defect of being temporary, while the 
unseen things have the infinite value of eter- 
nal endurance. Believing this, the new man in 
Christ sits lightly to things seen. They become 
the mere accidents of life, not its substance. Of 
this world's goods he may have much, and he 
is glad because they can be used to enrich other 
lives; or he may gather little, and he is glad 
because he has not the responsibility of the 
right use of great possessions. His true inheri- 
tance is in heaven. And in and through all 
this the Son has made him free. 

Walking in the Spirit, the Lord's free-man 
has but to heed the exhortation, "Stand fast, 
therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath 
made us free, and be not entangled again with 
the yoke of bondage." 



V 
The Larger Christian Life 

Text: "He brought me forth also into a large place." — Psa. 
18:19. 

YOU observe that we have here a testi- 
mony, not a promise. God actually had 
done this thing for David. He was a 
shepherd lad ; obscure, conscious but dimly if at 
all of his own capacities ; shut up to the small 
things and small thoughts of a young rustic. 
Then God began to work in his life, stimulat- 
ing him with great promises, leading him into 
great ventures, beating him with the hammer 
of adversity till the crude ore of him was 
turned into tempered steel; but all the while 
breaking shackles, tearing away enmeshing 
nets, lifting the wings of his soul, filling him 
with divine inbreathings, expanding, enlarging, 
disenthralling him ; until at last David came to 
the consciousness that he was a free man and 
in a large place. He could stand with lifted 
head, strong young arms outflung, upraised 

56 



THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 57 

chest breathing deep the free, ample air, a 
man at home in the universe. I repeat it, 
David is testifying here, not theorizing. He 
had found it so. Upon which I remark: 

THE REAL CHRISTIAN LIFE IS LARGE 

It is the men who are living without God 
who are living in a small and narrow place. 
There is no more shameless lie afloat among 
men than that the Christian life is a narrow 
life, and that the life that does not subject it- 
self to the will of God is a high, free thing. 

We are all, I believe, passionate lovers of 
liberty. We seek room; we want a place in 
which we may expand and broaden out. A 
great many young people of today have a fancy 
that to come into the will of God is to come 
into narrowness. It is Satan's lie. But let us 
not blame the devil overmuch. He never could 
have got his lie believed if so many of God's 
people had not made ' "religion" a poor nega- 
tive thing: a system of "don't" and of outward 
observance. 

It was to intensely "religious" people — in 



58 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

this sense — that Christ spoke His great word, 
"If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye 
shall be free indeed," He came to preach de- 
liverance to the captive of formalism no less 
than to the captive of sin. The gospel is a call 
out of littleness, out of pettiness, out of insig- 
nificant things, to the breadth and sweep of 
great thoughts and forces, and to the wide hori- 
zon of limitless possibilities. 

Now it is true of every child of God that he 
is brought into a large place. Unfortunately, 
many persist in living narrow lives in the large 
place. To be free and not to know it, this 
seems to me tragical and pathetic beyond 
words. One thinks of old prisoners set free, 
and weeping for the old dungeon again. 

CIRCUMSTANCES CANNOT NARROW IT 

Just here permit me to anticipate a very nat- 
ural objection. You say, "I live in obscurity; 
God has set me in narrow circumstances, in a 
routine of petty duties. I live in a farm house; 
I live in a village; I toil in a factory; I monot- 
onously feed pieces of leather or wood into a 



THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 59 

machine and never see them again; I plow, I 
delve, I sell cloth by the yard, I wash pans and 
dishes. I know of no large and beautiful way 
to wash pans. I keep a little district school; I 
must have my mind on my work; my back 
grows bent and my muscles stiff and sore. I 
am no exultant young David, anointed of the 
Lord, free to go and come, to sing deathless 
songs, to rule over men." 

PATIENCE,, DEAR HEART, HEAR THIS 

Jesus Christ lived thirty years in Nazareth, 
but He never permitted Nazareth to give the 
measure of His life. You may think of Him 
as a boy helping His mother, holding baby, 
fetching water from the fountain and chips 
from the shop. He made yokes, I suppose, 
not wholesale with a big iron machine, but one 
by one, patiently fitting them to peasant shoul- 
ders, broad and narrow, stooped and straight. 
Thirty years He lived there, and there was ma- 
tured the finest human character the world 
ever saw. The baptism with the Spirit added 
power; suffering perfected sympathy, but it 



60 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

was the largest, freest man that ever lived who 
laid down His carpenter's tools one day and 
walked down to Jordan to be baptized of John. 

Do you not see the secret? He never per- 
mitted Nazareth to put its littleness upon Him. 
The one man upon whom there are no limita- 
tions whatever of race, of circumstance or of 
character was a villager who toiled for bread! 

It is not given to many of us to live in great 
scenes and to be a part of great transactions. 
Our life is a round of small cares and duties. 
But Jesus Christ lived in narrower circum- 
stances than ours. The newspapers, the tele- 
graph, the railway and steamship bring 
largesses to the remotest of us. Homer chanted 
his deathless songs from door to door, in pov- 
erty, unappreciated, for a crust of bread. Mil- 
ton, shut up to physical blindness, ranged in 
spirit from the Paradise that was to the Para- 
dise that shall be. Dante, in exile, in a petty, 
mediaeval town, learning "the steepness of an- 
other's stairs and the saltness of another's 
bread," fathomed the upper and the nether 
depths. 



THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 61 

Do you say, "But we are not Homer, Milton, 
and Dante?" Thank God! I would rather 
have my two eyes than Milton's fame ; my own 
good native land than Dante's exile ; my hum- 
ble home than Homer's wanderings. But surely 
our souls have some power of flight; their 
wings may beat the upper air for some dis- 
tance, somewhere, if they may not take Dante's 
tremendous spirals. 

WHAT WE ARE, NOT WHAT WE DO, DETERMINES 
THE LARGENESS OF LIFE 

Lacordaire says : "A king may pass through 
our streets clothed in purple and fine linen, 
and he may be a mean and base man, because 
his thoughts are mean and base ; and there may 
pass by a poor man in vile raiment and he may 
be a great man, because his converse with him- 
self is high and great." That is true. Things 
do not make life large. Men do large things 
sometimes in small places, and others do small 
things in large places. If we are of kin to the 
great souls we shall some time be known as of 
that strain. 



62 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

A homely American poet has put this into 
his poem: "The Unexpressed.'' Three men, 
writer, musician, builder, plod through life, 
toiling day by day for daily bread; and the 
writer never pens the epic which he dumbly 
feels ; the musician never composes the oratorio 
which resounds in his soul; the builder builds 
wooden houses instead of the cathedral of 
which he feels himself capable. And then they 
die, and the three men who greet them are Ho- 
mer, Mozart, and Michel Angelo! 

"This dead musician's soul went forth 

Into the darkness drear — 
A glad voice smote the clouds apart — 
The brother-greeting of Mozart, 

Who hailed him as his peer. 
'Souls know/ he said, 'that music best 
That haunts the dumb soul unexpressed.' " 

Yes ; many a life of obscurity, poverty, neg- 
lect, self-denial and pain is essentially great 
because it is lived in fellowship with great 
tilings — the tilings of God. Such a soul can 
wait. It is elect, and shall vet come to its own. 



THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 63 



"Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; 
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, 
For, lo, my own shall come to me. 



"I stay my haste, I make delays; 
For what avails this eager pace? 
I stand amid the eternal ways, 

And what is mine shall know my face. 



"Asleep, awake, by night and day, 
The friends I seek are seeking me. 
No wind shall drive my bark astray, 
Nor change the tide of destiny. 



"What matter if I stand alone? 

I wait with joy the coming years; 
My heart shall reap where it has sown, 
And garner up its fruit of tears. 



"The waters know their own and draw 

The brook that springs in yonder height; 
So flows the good with equal law 
Unto the soul of pure delight. 



"The stars come nightly to the sky, 
The tidal waves unto the sea; 
Nor time, nor tide, nor deep, nor high, 
Shall keep my own away from me!" 



64 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 
THE SECRET OF THE LARGER LIFE 

If now you ask me how all this larger Chris- 
tian life may be lived, I shall venture three 
suggestions : 

1. Put your life under the great law of ex- 
clusion by preoccupation. Keep littleness out 
by being with greatness. There was no place 
in Christ for mean things. It was not that 
Christ refused small cares, drudgeries, duties. 
It was that He accepted them and was filled 
with the joy of doing them. 

2. Live your Christian life in the sense of 
its great verities. You are children and heirs 
of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Say every 
day, "I am a child of God." I defy circum- 
stances to narrow and dwarf the life that is 
lifted by the consciousness of divine sonship 
and divine fellowship. 

"The larger Christian life is independent of 
circumstances." 

There drifted into my house once a human 
wreck. He had been the editor of a great daily 
newspaper, and was a man of rare gifts. It 
was the old story; little by little the drink habit 



THE LARGER CHRISTIAN LIFE 65 

had fastened upon him and had dragged him 
down to a living hell. I could not tell him to 
"assert his manhood;" he had none. I had a 
better gospel than that. I told him that he 
could be born again; that he could become a 
partaker of the divine nature, and a son and 
heir of God. He fell upon his knees. "My 
God!" he cried. "Can a dog like me become 
God's son?" And he poured out his heart, 
giving himself away to Christ. I shall never 
forget his transfigured face, nor the singular 
solemnity and loftiness of his bearing as he 
took my hand and said : "I am a child of God." 

Get out under the stars on a clear night, and 
look over your estate. The stars are yours and 
Christ's. Know that as a child of God you are 
greater than any possible estate, and you will 
not wash pans, plow and reap any less thor- 
oughly, but you will do these things royally, 
like a king or queen. Remember, you are of 
the family of God. 

A poor saint went into a very aristocratic 
church in a strange place. "I believe," said 
the usher rather dubiously, "that I do not know 
you." "Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?" 



66 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

asked the poor saint. "Oh, yes." "Well," said 
the poor man, "I am a poor brother of His." 

3. Be a vital part of Christ's work. 

"The field is the world." Your field is the 
world. Keep your sympathies world wide. If 
your heart is in China or Africa or Central 
America, and with the work there, it is just 
the same as if you were there, wherever your 
body may happen to be. 

At the Student Volunteer Convention in 
Cleveland they had Carey's cobbler's hammer. 
It was better worth seeing than the crown 
jewels in the Tower. No scepter in Christen- 
dom is so venerable as that hammer. It is as 
if it came out of the shop in Nazareth, almost. 
Carey beat hobnails into peasants' shoes with 
that hammer; beat sturdily and well. But, as 
one thinks of him, the narrow walls of his cob- 
bler's stall fall away, and his humble bench 
changes to the likeness of a throne, and one 
sees a pierced hand hold over his head the dia- 
dem of righteousness. For that cobbler, bowed 
over his daily task, was sweeping the darkened 
continents into his yearning, and holding a 
world up in prayer to God. 



VI 

The Spirit- Controlled Life 

Text: "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall 
be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." — 
John 4:14. 

LET us think of the Holy Spirit and the 
j inner life of the believer. There is an 
inner life ; an inner life so deep, so truly 
inner, that no one knows it but God and 
ourselves. It is a life of which, in its deeper 
depths, we never speak to our dearest friends. 
There are defects there, there are victories 
there — heart-surgings, heartaches that we can- 
not put into words — we can only go with them 
before God, and the Spirit, who helpeth our 
infirmities, can make intercession for us with 
groanings which cannot be uttered. 

Now, we are to think of the Holy Spirit as 
indwelling the believer : 

THE UPSPRINGING FOUNTAIN WITHIN 

What a wonderful symbol it is ! How apart 

67 



68 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

from all other instructions, it speaks of the con- 
stant renewal of the spiritual life. You know 
the contrast was with Jacob's well, which was 
very deep, and out of which water must be la- 
boriously drawn. When our Lord spoke to the 
woman about this living water, this water which 
was not down in the bottom of the well, but 
was upspringing, she asked a question: 
" Whence hast thou this water? Thou hast 
nothing to draw with and the well is deep." 

What a contrast, what a picture of the aver- 
age Christian life ! Somehow, if we are Chris- 
tians at all, we get on; we manage to get 
through the day after a fashion, but it is just 
like that poor woman, laboriously drawing 
water out of Jacob's well. We draw it up 
just a little at a time, and some of us with a 
sense that we have nothing to draw with, and 
there is a constant effort to be spiritual; and 
over against that our Lord puts the picture 
of a fountain that springs up of its own lovely 
energy, and throws its crystal flood into the 
clear air and dances and sparkles there in the 
sunlight, and then flows away to be kissed by 
the sun back again into the azure blue. 



THE SPIRIT-CONTROLLED LIFE 69 

Now the Christian life, the true spiritual lif e 
in Christ's conception of it, is a life which has 
within it the source and renewal of its freshness 
and vigor and power. An upspringing foun- 
tain constantly fed from a higher source, com- 
ing down that it may ascend again. Here is a 
little springlet in the valley half afraid that it 
may dry up ; and the spring up on the moun- 
tain says : "No, you shall not dry up, for I am 
renewing your abundance all the time." What 
a contrast with the average life! Here is the 
plentitude of divine power, the omnipotent 
Spirit of God, who has not only taken up his 
abode in us, but wishes to be in the believer a 
living vital force, constantly renewed, himself 
the un wasting Source. 

Now, is our Christian life like that, or do we 
have to painfully draw it with a creaking wind- 
lass out of Jacob's well till our backs ache? 
Which is it? Here is the contrast. 

SOURCE HIGHER THAN ITSELF 

And, too, the inlet must be kept open and 
the outlet must be kept open. 

There are two sins which Christians commit 



70 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

against the Spirit. We are said to grieve the 
Spirit, and we are told some of the things which 
grieve Him. "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of 
God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of 
redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and 
anger and clamor and evil speaking be put 
from you with all malice." Now are you allow- 
ing a little bitter feeling toward somebody in 
your heart? Bitterness! Wrath! Anger! Per- 
haps we do not care much about that. We say, 
"The Lord knows I was born with a hot tem- 
per; I am made up that way, but it is just a 
flash and all over in a minute." All over with 
you, perhaps, but is it all over with the heart 
you have wounded? Anger! Malice! Envy! 
Ah, my friends, all these things which we allow 
in ourselves, defended, petted, kept there, are 
but stones that choke the inlet and prevent the 
upspringing of the fountain. 

And then we are told not to quench the 
Spirit; not to say "No" to the Spirit, but to let 
the Spirit have His way. To say "No" when 
the Spirit says, "Pray, serve, give," is to choke 
the outlet, and the fountain does not flow. 
Now 



THE SPIRIT-CONTROLLED LIFE 71 

JUST A FEW PROPOSITIONS 

Do not imagine that your Jacob's well ex- 
perience proves that you have not the fountain 
within you. In other words, don't imagine, if 
you are a believer on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
that you have not the Spirit within. Every 
believer of the Lord Jesus Christ is indwelt by 
the Holy Spirit. You have not to intercede 
for Him, you have not to seek Him, you have 
but to take account of the fact that you have 
Him already. "What?" says Paul in the sixth 
chapter of 1 Corinthians, "Know ye not that 
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, 
which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye 
are not your own?" And remember, the 
apostle is addressing there a people whom he 
has just described as "carnal' — running after 
human leaders — babes in Christ, to these he 
says, "What? Know ye not that your body is 
the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, 
which ye have of God, and ye are not your 
own?" 

Now, when that fact is received by faith, 
without waiting for feeling, you have taken a 



72 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

long step toward better things. If you really 
believe that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in 
your mortal body, a transformation of life has 
begun. 

WHAT THE UPSPRINGING FOUNTAIN DOES 

First, the Spirit indwells the believer that he 
may give victory over the old self -life. A might- 
ier power has come in and while the old, evil 
life of the flesh is there, omnipotence is hold- 
ing it in the place of death and we may be 
free from the dominion of it. Not by good 
resolutions, not by struggling to keep a law, 
but by divine power within, to which we have 
yielded our whole being. Ah, it is a deep 
truth that old John Newton uttered when he 
said, "I hear a great deal of talk about the 
pope, but the pope who troubles me most is 
Pope John Newton." Now, the Spirit of God 
is there to govern, to control, to keep that self 
life in the place of death and to give us victory 
as we walk in the Spirit. 

And secondly, He is there to make real the 
things of Christ. "He shall receive of mine," 
as the promise was, "and show it unto you." 



THE SPIRIT-CONTROLLED LIFE 73 

Now that does not mean "exhibit," but make 
actual to us the things of Christ. 

And thirdly, He is here to make real to you 
the Fatherhood of God. You realize that God 
is your Father by the Holy Spirit. And when 
you pray to God you are not merely praying 
to a Creator, to one who laid the foundations 
of the earth and who keeps the planets in their 
courses, but you are praying to your Father in 
heaven; and just as you go to an earthly father 
with your needs, wanting help and counsel, 
just so you may go to your heavenly Father. 
So, because the Spirit of sonship dwells in you, 
you realize the Fatherhood of God. 

Furthermore, the Spirit will take up every 
one of the blessings which we have in Christ 
and give us possession of them. 

And when He is ungrieved and unquenched, 
He is doing that. That is the life in the Spirit. 

And then he takes up the problems, the diffi- 
culties that we have to do with our lives and 
settles them for us according to the will of 
God; so that the outer life is the unforced ex- 
pression of an inner life which is pure and clean 
and high, and full of love and tenderness, look- 



74 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

ing about with the eyes of love on all human- 
ity, watching for opportunities to put out the 
helping hand and to lift up the downtrodden 
and oppressed. 

The whole problem lies, not in self-effort, 
not in painfully drawing water out of Jacob's 
well — that is going back to the law; to what 
the apostle calls the "beggarly elements of the 
world"; to elementary things — and not going 
on to the fulness of what God has for us. 
Which is it to be hereafter? The upspringing 
fountain, or Jacob's well? 



VII 
The Joyous Life 

Text: "That they might have my joy fulfilled in them- 
selves."— John 17:13. 

WE have here two simple ideas — Jesus 
Christ filled with joy; ourselves priv- 
ileged to partake of that joy until 
we also are filled. 

PLEASURE, HAPPINESS, JOYOUSNESS 

It is not uncharitable to say that many peo- 
ple in this world are content if they may be 
merry ; they seek nothing higher from life than 
pleasure. If they may put far from them the 
burden and sorrow and care of this world, and 
forget its grief in a passing jest, they are con- 
tent. There is a place in life for pleasure, but 
pleasure is never the object of lives which are 
noble. 

Better than this and the pursuit, I would fain 
believe, of a far great number, is happiness. 
Happiness is an infinitely higher thing than 

75 



76 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

pleasure, and the desire of God that His chil- 
dren should be happy is abundantly revealed 
in the Bible. The Beatitudes are instructions 
in the art of happiness. 

But our text speaks of something which is 
better even than happiness, and that is joyous- 
ness. Joyousness, in the scriptural sense of 
the word, might be defined as happiness over- 
flowing. Happiness too full to be used up in 
mere personal satisfaction; happiness all alive 
and aglow. If happiness might be compared 
to a tranquil lake, embosomed in protecting 
hills, joyousness would be like the outflowing 
of a brimming river. 

It may, then, help us just at the beginning, 
to fix in our minds these three things which 
stand over against sorrow or pain; pleasure, 
which exists for and ends upon self; happi- 
ness, a deeper, nobler thing, and joyousness, 
which is the overflow of happiness. 

THE JOY OF JESUS CHRIST 

First of all, Jesus speaks of His own joy. 
Now, we do not habitually think of Jesus 
Christ as joyful. Long before His manifesta- 



THE JOYOUS LIFE 77 

tion, the Prophet Isaiah had said of Him that 
He would be a "man of sorrows and acquaint- 
ed with grief." And so it was. But observe: 
A man of sorrows, not a man of melancholy. 
We can not think of Jesus Christ as moping 
through life ; we can not think of Him as turn- 
ing fretfully toward His burden, as thinking 
of His wrongs — His throne denied Him, His 
people rejected Him, His poverty and humil- 
iation in a world which He had made. Just 
once, in Gethsemane, He speaks of His sorrows : 
"My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto 
death." But habitually He speaks of His joy- 
fulness. That, then, is the paradox of His lif e. 
"A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" ; 
but bearing these sorrows, as it were, upon the 
deep floodtide of a mighty joy. And the joy 
was more than the sorrow. 

Let us try to understand this paradox — an 
exultant and joyful man of sorrows. 

Have you ever observed that the nearer 
Jesus came to the cross, the more He spoke of 
His joy? You do not find that He testified 
of His joyfulness much in the earlier part of 
His ministry, and I believe not once in that 



78 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

which is called "the year of public favor," 
when the multitudes thronged Him, and it 
seemed as if the nation would really receive 
Him as the long-expected Messiah. But as 
He went on, drawing ever nearer to Calvary, 
and as the burden of the shame and sorrow 
and sin of the world began to gather in awful 
darkness over Him, He speaks ever more and 
more of His joyfulness, and in His closing 
admonitions and instruction there is a con- 
stant reference to the deep joy which filled 
His being. Just when the tide of sorrow is 
rising highest, the joyfulness seems to rise 
above it and triumph over it. 

THE PARADOX SOLVED 

If we ponder that, and connect it with the 
prophet's explanation of the sorrows of Jesus 
Christ, "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and 
carried our sorrows," I think we shall be on 
the very verge of solving the paradox. In 
other words (and is it not very simple?) , Jesus 
found His Supreme joy in bearing the sorrows 
of others. He was not joyfu 1 in spite of hav- 
ing to bear the sorrow and burden of the 



THE JOYOUS LIFE 79 

world; He was joyful because He could bear 
it. It was the fountain head, the very source, 
of His joy. 

I think we can conceive of that, if we are 
willing to separate ourselves for a moment 
from that shrinking which we all feel at the 
thought of pain and sorrow, and get upon the 
nobler side of our own souls. We can under- 
stand that such a being as Jesus would re- 
joice, with joy unspeakable, that He could do 
that thing. We can understand how, when 
looking down upon this world, with its sin 
and misery and want and woe, and mountain- 
ous iniquity, there would be ever in His heart 
the exultant joy at knowing that it was He 
who, in due time, should come down here and 
get underneath all that unspeakable guilt and 
bear it away from man through the cross. 

Just as Jean Valjean, in Victor Hugo's 
great story, was happy under the cart ; it hurt 
him cruelly, but he lifted it away from the 
old man who was being crushed by it. So 
there was a joy in the very pain which it cost 
to do it — the joy of vicarious suffering; the 
joy of getting underneath all that was bearing 



80 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

down the heart of humanity, and lifting it for- 
ever away — this was the joy of the Lord. 

You know how easily, after all, poor as this 
world is in nobleness, this truth finds illustra- 
tion. Surely, Winkelreid must have felt some- 
thing of that joy when he gathered the spears 
of the enemy into his own bosom so that his 
comrades might break the hostile line and make 
way for liberty. There must have been in him 
an ineffable joy as he felt those spears crush- 
ing into his heart and his life going out. There 
was suffering, but it was a joyful thing so to 
die. 

I think that pilot, who kept his burning 
boat against the shore until every passenger 
was safe, though his own hands burnt to a 
crisp as he held the wheel, must have had a 
joy greater than the pain. This is a very high 
kind of joy, but we may realize it after all, 
may we not? 

I think that captain who stood upon the deck 
of the sinking ship and gave his place in the 
last boat to a poor stowaway, who had no kind 
of claim upon him, and saw him pass on into 



THE JOYOUS LIFE 81 

safety while he went down with the ship, drank 
deeply of this joy of vicarious suffering. 

SOURCES OF THE SAVIOURS JOY 

Then there was another source of the joy 
of the Lord. He rejoiced in the will of God. 
Will you consider that for a moment? What 
a joyful thing it is that we are not left alone 
in this world! What a joyful thing to know 
that one is not the sport of circumstance and 
of accident; not orphaned amid all these de- 
structive forces that move in upon us, as chil- 
dren of God here in the world; to know, in 
short, that over it all there is the resistless 
will of God. Things are not happening to the 
children of God. We are moving upon an 
appointed course, and the joys and sorrows 
of our life are all appointed and portioned 
out, molding and shaping us for better things. 
The joy of doing and enduring the will of 
God, and of suffering that others might not 
suffer — here are the abiding sources of our 
Lord's joy. 

In the Hebrews we are told of another 
source of joy which sustained our Lord in 



82 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

the supreme agony of the cross — "the joy- 
that was set before him." The joy of the 
final consummation; the joy of anticipation 
when He should see the eternal results of 
His suffering; all this was present with Him 
helpfully in the hour of agony. That is what 
we need to see. Beyond question we do not 
live enough in the inspiration of the compen- 
sations and balancings of heaven. 

THE LOBl/s JOY,, OUR JOY 

Turn now for a moment to the other thought 
— the human side of it. 

"That my joy might be fulfilled in them." 

But how shall we have the joy of the Lord? 
Evidently there is here a call to the unselfish 
heights? If we are to share the joy of the 
Lord we must be willing to share that out of 
which His joy sprang. We must rejoice if 
we can bear away some sorrow from another 
heart, some burden from another life, even if it 
means sorrow and burden to us. 

We must learn to rejoice as we never yet 
have learned to rejoice, in the salvation of the 
lost. We read that there is "joy in the pres- 



THE JOYOUS LIFE 83 

ence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth." 

We must stop regretting that "only ten 
were converted," and, like the angels, rejoice 
over one sinner that repenteth. 

Then we must turn our thoughts more to- 
ward the future, toward the heavenly rest, the 
heavenly activities and the eternal joys which 
are there. I repeat, it is a trumpet call. It 
costs something to have the joy of the Lord. 
Salvation, with its joy, is a free gift, but the 
joy of the Lord is to be had only by enter- 
ing into fellowship with the Lord in His life 
plan; to be, in the measure of our capacity, 
Christ's in the world; to get with Him into 
the joy of suffering; into the joy of the great 
sweet will of God ; into the expectation of the 
things to come. 

It was a great thing for humanity when 
that strange being, Peter the Hermit, went 
through Europe preaching the Crusades. It 
was a call to those barons and knights to cease 
petty neighborhood wars; to come away from 
their pompous and empty way of life; from 



84 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

tilting in the castle yard, and feasting in the 
castle hall, to go forth to do an unselfish thing. 
Is not the sorrow and pain of human life a 
call to a perpetual crusade, a call up out of 
the petty things in which our lives are frittered 
away, into sympathy and helpfulness? And is 
not the sin of the world a call to go out upon 
Christ's own great enterprise of salvation into 
the uttermost parts of the earth? It seems to 
me there is something in this that ought to lay 
hold of the noble side of us, that ought to re- 
deem us from the meanness of self-pleasing 
and to lift us up into a glad participation in 
our Lord's sufferings and also in His unspeak- 
able joy. 






VIII 

The Consecration 

Texts "And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant 
of the Lord unto his place, into the oracle of the house, to 
the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubims. 
For the cherubims spread forth their two wings over the place 
of the ark, and the cherubims covered the ark and the staves 
thereof above. And they drew out the staves, that the ends 
of the staves were seen out in the holy place before the ora- 
cle, and they were not seen without; and there they are unto 
this day. There was nothing in the ark save the two tables 
of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord 
made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came 
out of the land of Egypt. And it came to pass, when the 
priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled 
the house of the Lord."— 1 Kings 8:6-11. 

I WISH to begin a study of the subject of 
Consecration. I believe it to be, in the 
common apprehension of believers, great- 
ly encumbered with misconceptions. Is con- 
secration God's act or man's act? Is it partly 
man's act and partly God's act? If so, what is 
man's part in it? 

Beyond doubt the subject is vaguely felt 
to be important. The religious literature of 

85 



86 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

the time insists upon this importance, and very 
rarely do Christians come together in conven- 
tions, or in any large gathering, without ap- 
pointing hours for "consecration meetings." 
And, in fact, there is a great deal of so-called 
"consecrating" done. The Christian Endeavor 
societies appoint monthly consecration meet- 
ings, and so, in a certain sense, there is a 

PERPETUAL CONSECRATION 

work going on. There is a great deal of prayer 
about consecration, and a great deal of talk 
about it, and a great many directions how to 
do it, and a great deal of doubt, I believe, at 
the end, whether it has been done after all — 
the doubt, of course, growing out of the fact 
that so many people are continually reconse- 
crating themselves. 

Now, is consecration something that requires 
to be done over and over again? If it is, we 
ought to know it. We ought to know what 
degree of frequency there should be in the act 
of consecration, so that we may be very sure 
that we keep consecrated all of the time. 

I am the more surprised by this confusion, 



THE CONSECRATION 87 

because God has, so to speak, prepared the 
subject for our study. He has put into the 
Bible 

TWO GREAT TYPICAL ILLUSTRATIONS 

of consecration, one in the consecration of the 
temple, and the other in the consecration of the 
priesthood. And you know that both of these 
types converge upon us, the believers of this 
dispensation, for we are called both "temples" 
and "priests." 

"For ye are the temple of the living God" 
(2 Cor. 6:16) . "What? know ye not that your 
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" (1 
Cor. 6:19). "Ye are a chosen generation, a 
royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:9). "Unto him 
that loved us, and washed us from our sins in 
his own blood, and hath made us kings and 
priests unto God" (Rev. 1:5, 6). 

The temple was for the possession, the abid- 
ing place of God ; the priesthood, for the serv- 
ice of God; and for each there was an act — 
consecration. The shekinah did not take pos- 
session of the temple until the act of consecra- 
tion was complete; nor could a priest, though 



88 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

born to the priesthood, enter upon his serv- 
ice until duly consecrated. 

My purpose, then, is to study the Temple- 
type of Consecration. 

1. Now, first of all, consider what a won- 
derful structural analogy there is between that 
old typical temple, and these living temples 
which we are. 

The temple, as you remember, was in three 
parts : the court, or outer enclosure, which was 
public and obvious, and into which any might 
enter; the holy place, coming next to the 
court, which was the ordinary place of wor- 
ship, as the court was of sacrifice; and then, 
opening out of the holy place, the holy of 
holies, into which the high priest only — type 
of Christ, our High Priest — might enter, and 
which was filled with the glory of the presence 
of God. 

Just so, the living temple is in three parts — 
the body, outward, obvious and answering to 
the outer court, in which sacrifice was offered 
(for remember, Christ "bore our sins in his 
own body"), the soul, or "heart," the seat of 
affections, desires, and of the will (and, there- 



THE CONSECRATION 89 

fore, the sphere of worship, for worship is lov- 
ing adoration and praise) and, lastly, con- 
nected with the soul most intimately in some 
way which we do not precisely understand, but 
yet distinct from it, the spirit, the highest part 
of man, the seat of the reason, the understand- 
ing, the imagination — in a word, the mind. 
And, just as the body answers to the temple 
court, and the soul to the holy place, so the 
spirit is, in these living temples, the holy of 
holies. 

2. Recur now to the passage which is our 
text, and which describes the act by which the 
temple was consecrated, and we shall see how 
the type helps us to understand what our con- 
secration must be if it is to have any real mean- 
ing. 

I think I am, most of all, struck by the 
exceeding simplicity of that act. The priests 
simply put the ark of the covenant into the 
holy of holies, and then withdrew. God did 
the rest. 

And the significance of the act is as simple 
as the act itself. That ark was, perhaps, the 
most important, the most all-inclusive of all 



90 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

the types of Christ. When God was showing 
to Moses the patterns in the mount, the first 
of them all was the ark. In a very real sense, 
the tabernacle was built around that ark. That 
ark with its shadowing cherubim and radiant 

SHEKIXAH GLORY 

was the center of Israel's worship and service, 
and, sprinkled with atoning blood, was Israel's 
mercy-seat. And, just as the temple was, as to 
the human side, consecrated when the ark was 
installed in its inmost apartment, so, when we, 
by a deliberate, definite act, have surrendered 
to Him for His exclusive habitation and pos- 
session, our whole being, body, soul and spirit, 
are consecrated. 

It is when we come to consider the temple- 
type in its several parts that we may with cer- 
tainty know not only how to proceed, but that 
the act is, indeed, complete. Remember, with 
the divine part of consecration we have no con- 
cern. God may safely be trusted to do His 
part. 

First, then, the priests carried the ark in. 
God did not send an angel to do that, nor in 



THE CONSECRATION 91 

any way assist by supernatural means. It was 
an action entirely upon the human side. It 
was the voluntary, deliberate act of the priests. 
Secondly. They carried it into the holy of 
holies. They did not stop in the court, nor 
even in the holy place. They kept no part of 
the temple for themselves. Into its innermost 
recesses, into that most secret room, made 
beautiful and costly with gold and precious 
marbles, and cunning work of the engraver — 
the very place where pride might most eas- 
ily entrench itself — they carried the ark. 

Thirdly. They drew out the staves. That 
was an act of exceeding symbolical beauty. 
You know what the staves were: they were 
the wooden rods by which the ark was carried 
from place to place, and there was an express 
command that during the wilderness wander- 
ings the staves should not be taken out. You 
see the significance of the action? It was a 
finality! They did not intend to do that again. 
They had surrendered the holy of holies to 
Jehovah for an everlasting possession. Israel 
had many recurring ceremonials, but "reconse- 



92 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

cration" was not one of them. They meant 
it. It was once for all. 

Fourthly. They went out. They did not 
remain to share the holy of holies with Je- 
hovah. And you observe, it was "when the 
priests were come out of the holy place, the 
cloud filled the house of the Lord." I am 
well persuaded that the cloud would never have 
filled the house if the priests had remained 
within. They went out. 

Observe, the surrender of the holy of holies 
was in itself the surrender of the temple. To 
reach it the ark passed through the court; 
passed through the holy place. There was 
no pause, 

NO PIECEMEAL SURRENDER, 

no separate ceremony for these outer parts of 
the edifice. To surrender the holy of holies 
was to surrender the court and the holy place. 
It is as if some conqueror, taking possession 
of a surrendered fortress, should pass through 
the outer defenses, through the inner defenses, 
and then into the inner citadel and there plant 



THE CONSECRATION 93 

his imperial banner in sign of undisputed occu- 
pancy of the whole. 

Precisely in this way is consecration pre- 
sented in the New Testament. "Present your 
bodies a living sacrifice" — the court. "Let the 
peace of God rule in your hearts" — the holy 
place. "Casting down imaginations, and ev- 
ery high thing that exalteth itself against the 
knowledge of God, and bringing into captiv- 
ity every thought to the obedience of Christ" 
— the mind, the holy of holies. 

8. Now let us make all of this personal. 
Perhaps we shall be ready to agree, first of 
all, that 

OUR CONCEPTION OF CONSECRATION 

has been poor and inadequate. We have been 
thinking of service, simply, and that in con- 
nection with the body; "take my hands, take 
my lips, take my feet," and so on, in a kind of 
sentimental, anatomical way. We have not 
thought of this temple-type and what it sig- 
nifies; of being God-filled, God-possessed, 
quite apart from considerations of service. I 
grow very weary of the perpetual spurring of 




94 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

God's dear people to service, service, as if any 
father ever did care so much to have his chil- 
dren toiling for him, as loving and trusting 
him. And the more so as the God-possessed 
Christian invariably does serve. No. There 
is a higher thought : the enthronement of Jesus 
as Lord of all. 

How is it with us, beloved? Have we, by 
a definite act of the will, heartily, joyfully, 
brought Jesus into His own, saying as we 
passed through the court, "This body, O Lord, 
is thine; rule it as thou wilt; choose thou its 
service?" As we passed through the holy 
place, "Rule thou in my heart, thou Peace of 
God," and as we came into the spirit: "Here 
abide, adorable Jesus; subject my reason to 
the authority of thy word ; set my imagination 
at holy work; 

SHINE INTO MY SPIRIT 

the radiant glory of thine own, and from this 
innermost place rule all the temple"? 

Then, have we drawn out the staves? You 
know what that means — it is not to be done 
over again. I know what you are thinking: 



THE CONSECRATION 95 

"Perhaps I did not do it well." I dare say- 
not. The priests may have moved very awk- 
wardly ; their feelings may not have been what 
they ought to have been; their conception of 
the meaning of what they were doing may have 
been imperfect. But this they did — they took 
the ark in and drew out the staves. 

And again: When you brought Christ in 
did you retire? Or, did you stay in with Him? 
Has not that been the trouble? 

I remember once hearing a rather excitable 
young lady testify in a meeting in New Eng- 
land. She said over and over again: "It is 
Jesus and I." A dear brother, who sat on the 
platform with me, whispered : "I have known 
that girl eight or nine years, in fact, I was 
her pastor, and that is just the trouble with 
her. It is Jesus and the girl. If she can ever 
get where she will say: 'It is Jesus only,' she 
will have a more even experience." 

4. Lastly, one word as to the divine side 
of consecration. The priests went out and left 
God in possession. It was then that the di- 
vine part of consecration was performed, and 
not till then. The shekinah of God filled the 



96 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

house with a glory-cloud which always abode 
between the wings of the cherubim over the 
mercy seat, and which spread and increased 
until all the holy place and the very courts 
were filled with the radiance. That was God's 
act. 

GOD ACCEPTED THE CONSECRATION 

when the priests had put Him where He be- 
longed and when there was no door shut to 
Him anywhere. There was no shining when 
He was in the court. There was no shining 
when He was in holy place, nor even when 
He was put in the most holy place; nor even 
when the staves were drawn out; it was not 
until the priests went out, setting themselves 
aside, disowning all lordship over the place, 
and left that building to God that the place 
was filled with glory. And till that was done, 
nothing w T as done. 

You know that what the shekinah was to the 
temple of old, the Holy Spirit is to these tem- 
ples which we are. 

"In whom ye also are builded together for 
an habitation of God through the Spirit" 



THE CONSECRATION 97 

(Eph. 2 :22) . "What? know ye not that your 
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which 
is in you?" (1 Cor. 6:19). 

This, then, is the tremendous typical sig- 
nificance of this type of the divine side of con- 
secration — it is the filling of the Holy Spirit. 
Think of it ! The answer of God to the heart- 
felt, sincere surrender of the whole being to the 
possession of Jesus Christ is the filling of the 
whole man, spirit, soul and body; with the 
Holy Spirit. How insignificant in compari- 
son the human side, and yet how unspeakably 
important, since the fullness of the Spirit's 
presence depends upon it. 

Friends, we walk by faith, not by sight. The 
priests of old could see the glory — with which 

GOD FILLED THE HOUSE 

- — we must believe it is there. Ah ! just there is 
the fatal gap with so many. Multitudes in all 
sincerity surrender the three-fold being to 
Jesus; and then, because they do not feel the 
Spirit in fuller manifestation, doubt — and re- 
peat the process again and again. Remember, 
it is not consecration to service, nor power for 



98 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

service which is before us in the Temple-type; 
that will be considered when the Priest-type 
is before us. It is consecration unto posses- 
sion. 

After all, can anything be simpler than real, 
biblical consecration. It is only putting God 
in His place, giving Him access everywhere, 
and then going out and leaving Him to the 
control of that which has been given to Him. 
Then God will do His part. He will take pos- 
session. 

Now, just a few questions. Have we, as 
believers, ever definitely brought Jesus into 
the temple at all? Have we not regarded Him 
as an external Master, to whom we gave some- 
thing which He might use, just as I might take 
that pencil and write with it? Have we 
brought Him within? Has that been the 
thought of our consecration? Have we given 
Him, by a definite act, the outer court — our 
bodies? If we have done that, have we, each 
one, brought Him into the holy place — our 
hearts — and said: "Now reign here, reign 
over me, over my desires and over my affec- 
tions"? If we have done that, have we sev- 



THE CONSECRATION 99 

erally brought Him, by a definite act, once for 
all, into our spirits, and said, "Reign over my 
reason, 

TAKE MY IMAGINATION 

and set it to picturing the glories of heaven 
and the beautiful things of God, and redeem 
it from the things it is too much occupied 
with"? And have we said: "Take this intel- 
lectual pride of mine, Lord Jesus ; I am a poor 
fool; just come in, and do my thinking for 
me"? 

Then, have we drawn out the staves? Have 
we said : "Lord, now you are brought in once 
for all and I draw out the staves; I am not 
going to do this again next month; I do it 
now"? And then, having said that, have we 
not gone out ourselves? 

How is it with us? Are we living as if this 
whole wonderful temple — body, soul and spirit 
— were no longer ours? It was ours, but we 
moved out and God moved in, and now it is 
His. Just when it is that way, I am very sure 
the glory of God will fill the house. 



IX 

Defilement and Cleansing 

Txxt: "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, 
let us cleanse ourselves from all nlthiness of the flesh and 
spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of G:d." — 2 Cor. 7:1. 

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive 
us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." — 
1 John 1:9. 

'Teter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet 
Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part 
with me." — John 13:8. 

W] ARE now to consider Defilement 
and Cleansing as connected with Con- 
secration. You remember that we 
have been looking at the subject of consecra- 
tion, first through the Temple-type; secondly, 
through the Priest-type. We. as believers, are 
both temples and priests ; and we found in the 
consecration of the temple for the abiding pres- 
ence of God. and the consecration of the priests 
for the service of God, a two-fold type which 
instructed us concerning our own consecration. 
Xow, while it is true that neither temple nor 
priest was ever reconsecrated, it is, alas, true 

100 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 101 

also that both were frequently defiled, and 
whenever that occurred, cleansing from that 
defilement was imperative. A defiled priest 
was still a priest ; indeed, he was born a priest, 
and consecration was but the ceremony which 
inducted him into his priesthood, into the ex- 
ercise of its functions, just as coronation puts 
into rulership one who is born a prince, born 
with a royal right. We are priests by the new 
birth, and consecration but opens the door to 
our service as such. Defilement suspends this 
privilege of service. A priest defiled was 
sternly 

FORBIDDEN TO SERVE 

in the things of God until cleansed, but the 
method of cleansing was not reconsecration, 
that was never done again. 

Without doubt, it occurred oftentimes, when 
there was a low spiritual state in Israel, that 
the priests, who really in God's sight, and ac- 
cording to the Book of God, were defiled, still 
served at the altar. But nothing could have 
been more displeasing to God than for them 
to persist in serving Him with unclean hands ; 



102 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

it was, as we might say, a wanton insult. It 
was shocking that one of God's priests should 
be defiled; it was insolent for him, with that 
defilement upon him, to presume to continue 
in the service of God. I might quote from 
the New Testament in this connection to show 
that God will have no service from a defiled 
servant. He has made abundant provision for 

INSTANT CLEANSING 

from defilement, but this He insists upon. 
4 'They that bear the vessels of the Lord must 
have clean hands." I am persuaded that one 
reason why there is so little fruit from very 
much of the service of those who unquestion- 
ably are God's children, is that they persist in 
service, or the forms of service, while living 
upon a low level. 

Now I want to take up briefly these two 
things: defilement and cleansing as connected 
with consecration. 

1. And, first, unpleasant as the matter is, 
look at defilement. Let us turn in our Bibles 
to the eighth chapter of Ezekiel. It may be 
we shall not need to go beyond that chapter, 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 103 

or, at most, to look at one or two other pas- 
sages which may serve to bring before our 
minds the biblical idea of defilement. 

"And it came to pass in the sixth year, in 
the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, 
as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah 
sat before me, that the hand of the Lord God 
fell there upon me. Then I beheld, and lo, 
a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the 
appearance of his loins even downward, fire; 
and from his loins even upward, as the ap- 
pearance of brightness, as the color of amber. 
And he put forth the form of a hand, and took 
me by a lock of mine head ; and the spirit lifted 
me up between the earth and the heaven, and 
brought me in the 

VISIONS OF GOD 

to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that 
looketh toward the north; where was the seat 
of the image of jealously, which provoketh to 
jealousy." 

Let me say a word here. This "image of 
jealousy" was simply an idol. Ezekiel goes 



104 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

in the spirit into the temple, and looking 
through the gate northward, right toward the 
altar, he found an idol set up in the very court 
of that temple, which had once been conse- 
crated to God. 

4 'And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel 
was there." 

That was not the proper place for the glory. 
The proper place for the shekinah was in the 
holy of holies over the ark, between the cheru- 
bim. We shall see presently why the glory 
had withdrawn from the holy of holies of the 
temple, and was abiding there; probably in- 
visible to the eyes of apostate Israel, but visi- 
ble to the faithful prophet. 

"Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up 
thine eyes now the way toward the north. So 
I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, 
and behold northward at the gate of the altar, 
this 

IMAGE OF JEALOUSY 

in the entry. He said furthermore unto me, 
Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the 
great abominations that the house of Israel 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 105 

committeth here, that I should go far off from 
my sanctuary?" 

God, as it were, had withdrawn from the 
inner room, from the place of His enthrone- 
ment, but still standing by the altar that spake 
of sacrifice. The higher blessings withdrawn, 
there was still the brazen altar for a point of 
meeting with God. Justification remains, 
blessed be God, even when His people have no 
heart for holiness. 

"But turn thee yet again, and thou shalt 
see greater abominations. And he brought 
me to the door of the court ; and when I looked, 
behold a hole in the wall. Then said he unto 
me, Son of man, dig now in the wall : and when 
I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And 
he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked 
abominations that they do here. So I went 
in and saw; and behold every form of creep- 
ing things, and abominable beasts, and all the 
idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon 
the wall round about." 

There was defilement with a vengeance. 
They were not going in by the usual way 
through the veil; they had made themselves 



106 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 
A SECRET WAY 

into the holy of holies. They had actually 
gone into the inner abiding place of God, which 
He had taken possession of at the consecration 
of that temple by the shining cloud of His 
glory, and had painted those golden walls with 
all the abominations of lust and idolatry! 

"And there stood before them seventy men 
of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in 
the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of 
Shaphan, with every man his censer in his 
hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up." 

They had dispossessed God, so to speak, 
from the holy of holies, and there they had 
pictured their idols, which were too filthy and 
obscene for the world to see. And, in secret, 
getting in by a hole in the wall, they were of- 
fering incense to those unspeakable things. Out 
in the outer court, where every one could see, 
the priests were still going through the form of 
the regular ritual of Israel; the lamb smoking 
on the altar every morning and every night, 
and by it stood the priest in the sacred gar- 
ments of priesthood! And there, just there, 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 107 

invisible to the defiled eyes of His priest, aw- 
ful in His nearness, was the God of the altar 
— cast out of the holy of holies, which was 
painted with abominations. 

"Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast 
thou seen what the ancients of the house of 
Israel do in the dark, every man in the cham- 
bers of his imagery?" 

Surely, exposition is not needed here. In 
the holy place an idol. Within the holy place 
an idol. Within the holy of holies, 

ALL CONCEALED 

from the eyes of man, unspeakable abomina- 
tions upon the painted walls, and the elders 
of Israel secretly offering incense. 

But apply the type. We are, in ourselves, 
that which corresponds to the temple, the court, 
the holy place, and the holy of holies — the 
body, the heart, the mind. Do we know some- 
thing of all this? Putting Jesus, by the act 
of consecration, into possession of the whole 
being, enshrining Him in heart and mind — 
and then letting loose the imagination to paint 
the walls of that inner chamber with pictures 



108 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

we would not wish the world to see? And 
do we like to go in there to see all this while 
keeping up our church-going — perhaps 
preaching or teaching Sunday-school classes — 
living before the world in the profession of be- 
ing God's people. Do we know anything about 
that? Or, if that be not our case, are we put- 
ting some idol into the temple, 

SOME DARLING THING 

that comes between us and God, while all the 
time our lips are saying: "Yes, God is su- 
preme"; do we know anything of that? It 
may be money, or social position, or a habit, or 
just self — the ugliest idol of all. 

"Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast 
thou seen what the ancients of the house of 
Israel do in the dark, every man in the cham- 
ber of his imagery?" 

All this was in the dark. I wonder if we 
would be willing to have the pictures which 
our imagination paints taken right out and 
shown to our fellowmen! 

"He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, 
and thou shalt see greater abominations than 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 109 

they do. Then he brought me to the door of 
the gate of the Lord's house which was toward 
the north ; and, behold, there sat women weep- 
ing for Tammuz." 

Tammuz— sun-god worship. When the sun 
went down, they worshipped him by weeping, 
as if he had died. And every morning they 
greeted the sun as if he were born again. That 
was pretty bad for the temple of Jehovah, was 
it not? 

"Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, 
O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou 
shalt 

SEE GREATER ABOMINATIONS 

than these. And he brought me into the inner 
court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the 
door of the temple of the Lord, between the 
porch and the altar, were about five and twenty 
men, with their backs toward the temple of the 
Lord, and their faces toward the east ; and they 
worshipped the sun toward the east." 

Now sun worship, in the very essence of it, 
is simply nature worship. The sun is the most 
glorious object which meets the eye as we look 



110 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

abroad upon nature. It is that on which life 
and comfort and all those things depend, and 
naturally, therefore, to the heart that has gone 
away from God, a kind of center of that wor- 
ship which goes out toward the powers of na- 
ture. 

You may say that I am wasting time to 
dwell upon this, that we have nothing like sun 
worship in this country, nothing like turning 
our backs to the altar of God, and worshipping 
the sun. I beg your pardon, we have. This 
is precisely 

THE MOST SUBTLE ABOMINATION 

permitted today in the thoughts and hearts of 
Christian people. It finds expression in the 
extraordinary deference of the modern church 
to so-called science. Multitudes are turning 
away from the Bible accounts of creation, and 
of the origin of man, to the improved theories 
and plausible hypotheses of alleged scientists; 
theories which hide God behind phenomena, 
and deny the supernatural. Witness the pur- 
chase by professed Christians of thousands 
upon thousands of volumes of "Natural Law 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 111 

in the Spiritual World." Witness the im- 
portation by professed Christians of Henry 
Drummond to lecture upon the "Ascent of 
Man," while they know that their Bibles give 
one long testimony to the descent of man. 
Never perhaps in all the history of the church 
was there such a turning of the back upon the 
altar of God and the temple of God to wor- 
ship nature, as now, and never were these 
things doing such serious harm. For millions 
of professed Christians Drummond and Dar- 
win are more authoritative than Moses. 

Now to sum up for a moment these defile- 
ments : The idol in the holy place ; the 

INNEE CHAMBER PAINTED 

with all manner of vileness, and the elders of 
Israel loving to be there, while out in the court 
men turn their backs upon the altar of God, 
too "advanced" to endure a dripping cross, 
and esthetically worship the sun. 
Turn now to the New Testament: 
"And the Jews' passover was at hand, and 
Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the 
temple those that sold oxen and sheep and 



112 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

doves, and the changers of money sitting: and 
when he had made a scourge of small cords, 
he drove them all out of the temple, and the 
sheep, and the oxen ; and poured out the chang- 
ers' money, and overthrew the tables ; and said 
unto them that sold doves, Take these things 
hence; make not my Father's house an house 
of merchandise" (John 2:13-16). 

Perhaps, we are beginning to apply the doc- 
trine of this passage to the temples of brick 
and stone and wood which we have erected for 
the worship of God; but the deeper truth ah 
ways lies back of the symbol, and we have here 
the thought illustrated for us of the prostitu- 
tion of the natural powers of man to the mere 
pursuit of gain; the taking of the body and 
making 

A MONEY-MAKING MACHINE 

out of it, or an eating and drinking machine, 
nothing else ; that body, which is the temple of 
God. Do we know anything of this? 

Without going further, we have here cer- 
tainly that which ought to search us. We have 
the thought of idols coining in between our- 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 113 

selves and God, and claiming our affections, 
also the thought of the mind polluted, the im- 
agination suffered to wander into things that 
are unclean and painting the inner chambers 
with foul imagery kept very secret ; of turning 
the back upon the altar of God in mad worship 
of nature and nature's laws. 

2. Let us turn now to the provision, alike 
sublime, simple and adequate, which God has 
made for our cleansing. 

First of all, let us look for a moment at one 
of the most familiar passages in the word of 
God. 

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). 

There is something then for us to do in the 
matter of cleansing when we have become de- 
filed. 

"If we confess our sins." That is a very dif- 
ferent thing, and far more searching in its im- 
port than the mere confession of sinfulness. 
We do that very readily. There is not one 
of us but what would say: "Yes, I am a sin- 
ner." 



114 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

"If we confess our sins." That means just 
taking the hateful things up one by one and 
showing them to God, saying: "I did this, 
and that, and that." I have observed so many 
times in dealing with my little son, that it is 
very easy to get a general confession from him 
that he has been doing that which is disobedi- 
ent, but it is not so easy to get him to tell just 
what he has been doing that is wrong. 

Confessing our sins is taking a hateful sin 
and holding it up before God, and letting Him 
look at it. Held up before God, in that white 
light, a sin does not look nearly so pretty as 
it did when we yielded to the temptation. 

That is the human side of cleansing — con- 
fession. I need not say that this is a believer's 
privilege. The Christ-rejecter might confess 
his sins until he fell into perdition, and his sins 
would be just the same as before. "No man 
cometh unto the Father, but by me," says 
Christ. There is but one way of salvation — the 
way of faith. But when we have confessed our 
sins then we may claim the promise : 

"He is faithful and just to forgive us our 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 115 

sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous- 
ness." First, forgiveness; then cleansing. 

How simple this is! Now connect it with 
the third text I gave you: Peter saying "Thou 
shalt never wash my feet," and Christ saying: 
"If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with 
tne." You see, there is no other resource. 
When we have become defiled we must 

RUN AWAY TO JESUS 

and humbly put the defiled feet in His pierced 
hand. But when that has been done faith says : 
"Now I am cleansed." 

The Christian who has confessed his sins 
ought not to go about with a sense of the di- 
vine displeasure, nor with the sense of defile- 
ment. Faith says: "I have done that which 
God requires from me, and now I believe He 
is indeed faithful, and has done His part of it. 
He has forgiven me, and there is no frown on 
His blessed face. He has cleansed me, and I 
am clean, and am going forward in His service 
with the full assurance that He is abiding 
sweetly once more in the very secret chambers 
of my being." 



116 THE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 

We must, as in salvation, take the divine 
part of it by faith. 

As in consecration, we yield ourselves for 
it and then believe we are consecrated because 
we dare not doubt that God does His part, so, 
when that consecration has become defiled, w£ 
confess the thing in all its detail to God, and 
we go away happy because we believe God has 
again done His part — has forgiven us, has 
cleansed us. 

After all, it is all by faith. We begin by 
faith and we go on by faith. That which is 
required of us is simple and reasonable and 
we do it, and then we believe God has done that 
which He promised he would do. 

After all, how very simple it is ! I may have 
made it very difficult, although it was in my 
heart to make it exceedingly simple. First of 
all, 

THE YIELDING TO GOD 

for consecration, followed by a definite act of 
faith which says : "God has done it; I am con- 
secrated." Then when defilement comes in, 
confession, and then again the act of faith, 



DEFILEMENT AND CLEANSING 117 

which says: "God has cleansed me, and once 
more I am clean every whit." Then we go 
forward in His service expecting the mani- 
festation of His glorious power, and then His 
peace garrisons our hearts and minds through 
Christ Jesus. 



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